The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene

Significant Level Thoughts

Jeez I took a ton of notes on this one. It's substantially more than about sexual enticement, it's about how to allure anybody, strategically, socially, and indeed, physically. Very fascinating analogs from history, strongly suggest it.

Outline Notes

"Enchantment is a round of brain research, not magnificence, and it is inside the grip of any individual to turn into an expert at the game. Everything necessary is that you take a gander at the world in an unexpected way, through the eyes of an enticer."

"What will entice an individual is the work we exhaust for their sake, showing the amount we give it a second thought, the amount they are worth."

"Enticers enjoy performing and are not overloaded by their personality, or by a should act naturally, or to be regular."

"Each enchantment has two components that you should break down and figure out: first, yourself and what is enticing about you; and second, your objective and the activities that will enter their safeguards and make give up."

The Seductive Character

Effective enchantment begins with what your identity is and the kind of alluring energy you express. It requires making yourself, or refining yourself, in one of the enticer classes.

• Sirens have an abundance of sexual energy and know how to use it.
• They lure in their targets, like the sirens of Odysseus, through their image and teases. Crafting the perfect seductive pose for their target.
• Rakes insatiably adore the opposite sex, and their desire is infectious.
• Unlike the normal, cautious male, the Rake is delightfully unrestrained, a slave to his love of women. There is the added lure of his reputation: so many women have succumbed to him, there has to be a reason.
• Remember: it is the form that matters, not the content. The less your targets focus on what you say, and the more on how it makes them feel, the more seductive your effect. Give your words a lofty, spiritual, literary flavor the better to insinuate desire in your unwitting victims.
• To play the Rake, the most obvious requirement is the ability to let yourself go, to draw a woman into the kind of purely sensual moment in which past and future lose meaning. You must be able to abandon yourself to the moment.
• If no obstacles face you, you must create them. Seduction requires obstacle.
• Ideal Lovers have an aesthetic sensibility that they apply to romance.
• Casanova was perhaps the most successful seducer in history; few women could resist him. His method was simple: on meeting a woman, he would study her, go along with her moods, find out what was missing in her life, and provide it. He made himself the Ideal Lover.
• But appeal to their better selves, to a higher standard of beauty, and they will hardly notice that they have been seduced. Make them feel elevated, lofty, spiritual, and your power over them will be limitless.
• Talleyrand simply held up a mirror to Napoleon and let him glimpse that possibility. People are always vulnerable to insinuations like this, which stroke their vanity almost everyone’s weak spot. Hint at something for them to aspire to, reveal your faith in some untapped potential you see in them, and you will soon have them eating out of your hand.
• Dandies like to play with their image, creating a striking and androgynous allure.
• Most of us feel trapped within the limited roles that the world expects us to play. We are instantly attracted to those who are more fluid, more ambiguous, than we are— those who create their own persona. Dandies excite us because they cannot be categorized, and hint at a freedom we want for ourselves.
• Dandies seduce socially as well as sexually; groups form around them, their style is wildly imitated, an entire court or crowd will fall in love with them. In adapting the Dandy character for your own purposes, remember that the Dandy is by nature a rare and beautiful flower. Be different in ways that are both striking and aesthetic, never vulgar; poke fun at current trends and styles, go in a novel direction, and be supremely uninterested in what anyone else is doing. Most people are insecure; they will wonder what you are up to, and slowly they will come to admire and imitate you, because you express yourself with total confidence.
• Naturals are spontaneous and open.
• Coquettes are self-sufficient, with a fascinating cool at their core.
• Coquettes seem totally self-sufficient: they do not need you, they seem to say, and their narcissism proves devilishly attractive.
• People are inherently perverse. An easy conquest has a lower value than a difficult one; we are only really excited by what is denied us, by what we cannot possess in full. Your greatest power in seduction is your ability to turn away, to make others come after you, delaying their satisfaction.
• To understand the peculiar power of the Coquette, you must first understand a critical property of love and desire: the more obviously you pursue a person, the more likely you are to chase them away.
• Self-esteem is critical in seduction. (Your attitude toward yourself is read by the other person in subtle and unconscious ways.) Low self-esteem repels, confidence and self-sufficiency attract. The less you seem to need other people, the more likely others will be drawn to you.
• Charmers want and know how to please— they are social creatures.
• Charmers do not argue or fight, complain, or pester— what could be more seductive?
• First, they don’t talk much about themselves, which heightens their mystery and disguises their limitations. Second, they seem to be interested in us, and their interest is so delightfully focused that we relax and open up to them. Finally Charmers are pleasant to be around. They have none of most people’s ugly qualities— nagging, complaining, self-assertion.
• Charismatics have an unusual confidence in themselves.
• Learn to create the charismatic illusion by radiating intensity while remaining detached.
• Creating the air of charisma:
• Purpose. If people believe you have a plan, that you know where you are going, they will follow you instinctively The direction does not matter: pick a cause, an ideal, a vision and show that you will not sway from your goal.Mystery. Mystery lies at charisma’s heart, but it is a particular kind of mystery— a mystery expressed by contradiction, by having conflicting traits.Saintliness. Most of us must compromise constantly to survive; saints do not. They must live out their ideals without caring about the consequences. The saintly effect bestows charisma.Eloquence. A Charismatic relies on the power of words.Theatricality. A Charismatic is larger than life, has extra presence.Uninhibitedness. Most people are repressed, and have little access to their unconscious— a problem that creates opportunities for the Charismatic, who can become a kind of screen on which others project their secret fantasies and longings.Fervency. You need to believe in something, and to believe in it strongly enough for it to animate all your gestures and make your eyes light up.Vulnerability. Charismatics display a need for love and affection.Adventurousness. Charismatics are unconventional.Magnetism. If any physical attribute is crucial in seduction, it is the eyes. They reveal excitement, tension, detachment, without a word being spoken.
• People do not want to hear that your power comes from years of effort or discipline. They prefer to think that it comes from your personality, your character, something you were born with.
• Stars are ethereal and envelop themselves in mystery.
• People are hopelessly susceptible to myth, so make yourself the hero of a great drama. And keep your distance— let people identify with you without being able to touch you. They can only watch and dream.
• First, you must have such a large presence that you can fill your target’s mind the way a close-up fills the screen.
• Second, cultivate a blank, mysterious face, the center that radiates Starness.
• The Anti-Seducer: those who repel
• Anti-Seducers come in many shapes and kinds, but almost all of them share a single attribute, the source of their repellence: insecurity.
• It is critical to recognize anti-seductive qualities not only in others but also in ourselves. Almost all of us have one or two of the Anti-Seducer’s qualities latent in our character, and to the extent that we can consciously root them out, we become more seductive.
• The Brute: Who has no patience, who wants to skip the seduction, who offends with egotism.
• The Suffocator: Those who cling incessantly to you, love you before you know who they are, or who make themselves a doormat to you in their obsession.
• The Moralizer: Who wants you to bend to their standard.
• The Tightwad: Cheapness displays more insecurity beyond money.
• The Bumbler: The awkward speaker, who makes others feel awkward too.
• The Windbag: Who won’t shut up.
• The Reactor: Who is terrified to have their ego damaged.
• The Vulgarian: Who ignores the rules of the game, presents a garrish image, does not play the game and yet expects to win.
• It is rather because wordless communication (through clothes, gestures, actions) is the most pleasurable, exciting, and seductive form of language.

The 18 Types of Seducer Victims

Never attempt to lure your own sort.

Individuals are continually giving out signs of what they need, you need to check out these signs and decipher their sort in view of them.

The Reformed Rake or Siren: They frantically lengthy to get away from whatever corralled them in, what is keeping them from being their ordinary uninhibitedly sexual self.

The Disappointed Dreamer: They long for experience, yet are caught in an exhausting way of life.

The Pampered Royal: The long to be deeply inspired by a perfect suitor and let them experience their dream of being spoiled and dealt with like sovereignty.

The New Prude: exorbitantly worried about their presentation, under they need to deliver, however they dread judgment. They should feel like they're imparting confidential to you…

The Crushed Star: No longer the focal point of consideration, they long to have that feeling of being revered back.

The Novive: They need to at minimum feel that no doubt about it as well, but at the same time are invigorated by the chance of being acquainted with a new, more obscure world…

The Conquerer: You should give them an impediment to survive, a mission, an objective.

The Exotic Fetishist: They need curiosity, new encounters, things on the edge, you should situate yourself as something intriguing.

The Drama Queen: They long for dramatization in their lives, so you'll have to assist with making it to keep them riveted.

The Professor: They examine and ponder everything, except long to be overpowered by an all the more nonconformist who can assist them with delivering their psychological obstruction.

The Beauty: Used to being valued, you should zero in on the less commended highlights like her acumen or mind.

The Aging Baby: Still juvenile and needing a steady parent, you should empower their immature cravings while still sometimes pulling them in.

The Rescuer: They long to feel like they're saving somebody from themselves, you should cause them to feel that they would be able "save" you from something and they will become fixated. Let her be your maternal defender.

The Roué: Experienced throughout everyday life, they want to teach somebody more gullible.

The Idol Worshipper: You should turn into their object of love that gives the significance in life that they look for.

The Sensualist: Driven by their faculties, you should overpower their site, smell, and contact, to completely attract them.

The Lonely Leader: Act as their equivalent or prevalent, the sort of relationship they seldom have.

The Floating Gender: Float with them.

Temptation Phase 1: Separation, Stiring Interest and Desire

Picking the right casualty

The right casualties are those for whom you can make up for, an in shortcoming you something intriguing.

To let individuals who are out of reach to you be is an astute way; you can't entice everybody.

Never race into the holding up arms of the principal individual who appears to like you. That isn't enchantment however instability.

Individuals who are ostensibly far off or timid are in many cases preferable focuses over outgoing people. They are biting the dust to be somewhat long, regardless waters run profound.

Then again, you ought to by and large keep away from individuals who are engrossed with business or work — enchantment requests consideration, and occupied individuals have too little space in their psyches for you to involve.

Making a False Sense of Security, Approach Indirectly

Whenever you have picked the right casualty, you should stand out and mix want. To move from kinship to cherish can win accomplishment without pointing out itself as a move.

In the first place, your agreeable discussions with your objectives will bring you significant data about their characters, their preferences, their shortcomings, the youth desires that administer their grown-up conduct.

Second, by investing energy with your objectives you can make them OK with you.

Then, shock their assumptions with a wayward touch or idea, make them currently intrigued.

There isn't anything more successful in enchantment than making the lured feel that they are the ones doing the tempting.

The main move to dominate is basic: whenever you have picked the perfect individual, you should make the objective come to you.

An excessive amount of consideration right off the bat will simply propose weakness, and raise questions concerning your intentions. To top it all off, it gives your objectives no space for creative mind. Make a stride back; let the contemplations you are inciting come to them as though they were their own.

In all fields of life, you ought to never give the feeling that you are plotting for something — that will raise an opposition that you won't ever lower. Figure out how to move toward individuals from the side.

Convey Conflicting Messages

What is self-evident and striking might stand out for them right away, however that consideration is many times brief; over the long haul, equivocalness is substantially more intense. A large portion of us are excessively self-evident — all things considered, be difficult to sort out.

To develop their advantage, you should indicate an intricacy that can't be gotten a handle on in up to 14 days.

In the event that you have a sweet face and a blameless air, let out traces of something dim, even enigmatically savage in your personality.

Have all the earmarks of being an Object of Desire: Create Triangles

You see a man alone, whom no one discussions to for any time allotment, and who is meandering around without organization; isn't there a sort of unavoidable disconnection about him? For what reason would he say he is distant from everyone else, for what reason would he say he is kept away from? There must be an explanation.

Whenever individuals' vanity is in danger, you can cause them to do anything you desire. As per Stendhal, on the off chance that there is a lady you are keen on, focus on her sister. That will mix a three-sided want.

Men who accept that a saucy standing will make ladies dread or doubt them, and ought to be made light of, are very off-base. Going against the norm, it makes them more alluring.

Make a need, mix nervousness and discontent

Individuals are generally vulnerable to being allured, on the grounds that as a matter of fact everybody misses the mark on feeling of culmination, feels something missing somewhere inside. Carry their questions and tensions to the surface and they can be driven and baited to follow you.

Make individuals restless about the future, make them discouraged, make them question their personality, seem OK the fatigue that bothers their life. The ground is ready. The seeds of temptation can be planted.

Excel at Insinutation

There is no known guard, nonetheless, against intimation — the craft of causing people to think about thoughts by dropping tricky clues that flourish days after the fact, in any event, appearing to them as their own thought. Make everything intriguing.

Enter Their Spirit

Play by their guidelines, appreciate what they appreciate, adjust to their states of mind. In doing so you will stroke their well established selfishness and lower their safeguards.

Make Temptation

As the snake enticed Eve with the guarantee of illegal information, you should stir a longing in your objectives that they have no control over. Track down that shortcoming of theirs, that dream that presently can't seem to be understood, and hint that you can lead them toward it.

Track down that youth uncertainty, that need their life, and you hold the way to enticing them. Their shortcoming might be voracity, vanity, weariness, some profoundly quelled want, a strive after taboo natural product. They signal it in little subtleties that evade their cognizant control: their way of dress, a spur of the moment remark.

Stage 2: Lead Astray — Creating Pleasure and Confusion

Keep Them In Suspense, what comes straightaway?

Act such that leaves them pondering, What are you up to? Accomplishing something they don't anticipate from you will provide them with a great feeling of immediacy — they can not predict what comes straightaway.

There are a wide range of determined shocks you can spring on your casualties — sending a letter out of nowhere, showing up suddenly, assuming them to a position they have never been. Yet, best of all are shocks that uncover a novel, new thing about your personality.

Dependability is fine for attracting individuals, however remain solid and you stay a drag. Canines are solid, an enticer isn't.

Utilize the Demonic Power of Words to Sow Confusion

Aggravate individuals' feelings with stacked phrases, compliment them, solace their frailties, encompass them in dreams, sweet words, and guarantees, and not exclusively will they stand by listening to you, they will lose their Will to oppose you.

A lady was lovely, at this point needed trust in her own mind and insight? He tried to say that he was beguiled not by her excellence but rather by her psyche.

Focus on Detail

Poeticize Your Presence

You can be risky, devious, even to some degree indecent, contingent upon the inclinations of your casualty. Yet, never be common or restricted. In verse (instead of the real world), the sky is the limit.

The main thing that can't be romanticized is average quality, however there isn't anything tempting about unremarkableness. There is no conceivable method for luring without making dream and poeticization of some sort or another.

Incapacitate Through Strategic Weakness and Vulnerability

The most ideal way to cover your tracks is to cause the other individual to feel prevalent and more grounded. Assuming you are apparently frail, defenseless, enchanted by the other individual, and incapable to control yourself, you will make your activities look more normal, less determined.

Keep in mind: what is normal to your personality is innately alluring. An individual's weakness, what they appear to not be able to control, is in many cases why are they generally alluring.

A lady, for example, might be drawn in by a man's solidarity and self-assurance, yet a lot of it can make dread, appearing to be unnatural, even monstrous.

Confound Desire and Reality — The Perfect Illusion

Your assignment as an enticer is to bring a few flesh into somebody's dream life by epitomizing a dream figure, or making a situation looking like that individual's fantasies.

Confine the Victim

Separate them from their current circumstance genuinely, inwardly, and intellectually, so they can turn out to be additionally engaged with you.

Stage 3: The Precipice, developing the impact through drastic actions

Show what you can do

Try not to stress over looking stupid or committing an error — any sort of deed that is generous and for the good of your objectives will so overpower their feelings, they won't see anything more.

Keenly lead your casualty into an emergency, a snapshot of risk, or in a roundabout way set them in an awkward position, and you can play the hero, the courageous knight.

Impact a Regression

Work Up the Transgressive and Taboo

Causing your objectives to feel that you are driving them past one or the other sort of breaking point is hugely tempting. Individuals long to investigate their clouded side.

Yet, we are abnormal creatures: the second any sort of breaking point is forced, actually or mentally, we are in a flash inquisitive. A piece of us needs to go past that breaking point, to investigate what is illegal.

The most unmitigated method for doing this is to participate in conduct that gives you a dim and taboo quality. Hypothetically you are somebody to keep away from; truth be told you are too tempting to even think about standing up to.

Utilize Spiritual Lures

Everybody feels quite unsure and weaknesses — about their body, their self-esteem, their sexuality. Assuming your temptation requests solely to the physical, you will work up these questions and make your objectives reluctant. All things considered, draw them out of their weaknesses by making them center around something brilliant and otherworldly: a strict encounter, a grandiose masterpiece, the mysterious.

Blend Pleasure in with Pain

Draw them in with centered consideration, then, at that point, take an alternate route, showing up unexpectedly uninterested. Cause them to feel remorseful and uncertain. Indeed, even actuate a separation, exposing them to a void and torment that will give you space to move

Your temptation ought to never follow a basic course up toward delight and congruity. The peak will come too early, and the delight will be frail. What makes us seriously value something is past affliction.

Without pressure, without uneasiness and tension, there can be no sensation of delivery, of genuine joy and satisfaction. It is your errand to make that pressure in the objective, to animate sensations of nervousness, to lead them back and forth, so the finish of the temptation has genuine weight and power. So freed yourself of your frightful propensity for keeping away from struggle, which is anyway unnatural. You are most frequently decent not out of your own inward goodness but rather out of dread of disappointing, out of frailty.

Stage 4: Move in for the kill

Give Them Space to Fall — The Pursuer Is Pursued

Mix the pot by appearing to be keen on another person. Make no part of this unequivocal; let them just sense it and their creative mind will wrap up, making the uncertainty you want.

Comprehend: an individual's determination is straightforwardly connected to their drive, their suggestive craving. Whenever your casualties are latently hanging tight for you, their suggestive level is low. At the point when they turn follower, engaging all the while, overflowing with strain and tension, the temperature is raised.

Utilize Physical Lures

While your cool, casual air is quieting their brains and bringing down their hindrances, your looks, voice, and bearing — overflowing sex and want — are getting under their skin, upsetting their faculties and raising their temperature.

Second, be aware of the indications of actual excitation. Becoming flushed, shaking of the voice, tears, uncommonly powerful giggling, loosening up developments of the body (any sort of compulsory reflecting, their motions copying yours), a noteworthy mistake — these are signs that the casualty is slipping into the second and tension is to be applied.

Become amazing at the Bold Move

One individual should go into all out attack mode, and it is you.

Be careful the Aftereffects

Mix the pot, regardless of whether that implies a re-visitation of causing agony and pulling back. Never depend on your actual charms; even excellence loses its allure with rehashed openness. Just system and exertion will fend off latency

Keep up with your secret and gentility

Keep away from the sluggish burnout, Once you feel disenthralled and realize it is finished, end it rapidly, without expression of remorse. When you are really embittered, moving ahead is the only option, so don't hold tight out of misleading compassion. Making a total separation is more sympathetic. In the event that that appears to be unseemly or excessively monstrous, purposely disenthrall the casualty with hostile to enticing way of behaving.